There are 121 clubs at Wilfrid Laurier University and DECA Laurier is certainly one of the largest with nearly 300 members. Preparing for a provincial case competition scheduled on Jan. 20 In Toronto, the business club held an in-house case competition on Jan. 13 and 14 for the 131 members who would be attending Toronto’s event.

The case study competition gives members the opportunity to solve the problems of existing businesses in both Canada and Dubai. Businesses involved range from Dubai’s largest tour operator Lama Desert Tours to the local frozen yogurt parlor Menchies, giving students a variety of categories to choose from.

According to Rashan Indrarathna, DECA Laurier’s assistant VP of marketing, DECA members had the choice to participate in a team event, which allowed them to pick a partner of their choice from any school they would like, or a single event allowing them to complete their chosen category independently. “The most popular categories are the fashion industry ones and the sports and entertainment ones because those are that our students can relate to the most,” said Indrarathna.

Although DECA is targeted towards people with ambitions of entering the business field, Indrarathna makes it apparent that anyone can join the club, not only business students. “We have various students that have joined, we have [political science] students, global studies students, it’s really open to anyone,” he said.

While DECA Laurier accepts any willing members, it is clear that the team is competitive as each member has to pay a $200 fee to attend the competition in Toronto, where there will be over 16 schools from Ontario and Quebec in attendance. Laurier has certainly made a name for itself at the competition over the past few years. “In our last three years we’ve managed to rack up a ton of awards like chapter of the year, chapter meeting team of the year and last year in itself we won Delegate Development Award,” said Indrarathna. “We usually come away with a ton of metals, last year our individual metal count was about 16. We definitely place quite highly.”

The club was expecting to have another year of success at the Toronto competition after witnessing the strength put forward by in-house winners Arshdeep Sidhu, Pavan Virdee, Khash Dolatabadi, Anton Goss, Priya Patel, Vincent Chow, Paul Ussher, Alvin Poon, Chelsea Tam, Margaret Yu, Alex Jutzi, Fraser Voll, William Yang, Ravinder Kumar and each of the other bright competitors.

It is apparent from the work produced by the club members that DECA Laurier has been fulfilling the ambitions put forth in their mission statement by inspiring students with a passion for business and giving them a platform for success. Indrarathna explained why he believes the club is so effective, “When you give [students] the exposure to these cases, especially in our in house competitions because they’re actual real life cases, they’re going to get inspired by this and we feel like it will give them practical knowledge; a good chance to practice their presentation skills and really test their creativity and in the end that’s going to [make them] a well rounded business leader.”